Murder on the Orient Espresso(66)

‘Hello, ladies,’ I said, slipping into the window seat behind Audra. ‘Don’t let me bother you, I’m just taking a nap.’

‘No bother,’ Rosemary said, getting up. ‘I’m grateful for the reprieve.’

‘Bitch,’ Audra said to her back as the author retreated.

‘I take it Ms Darlington and you have some sort of … history?’ I asked innocently, using Missy’s word.

‘No,’ Audra said pointedly, ‘but Rosemary and my husband did, much as she denies it.’

‘I know that Mr Potter mentored her,’ I was using last names to create distance from the participants, ‘but are you saying they had something more?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Audra turned and put her back against the wall of the train, stretching her legs out across the seats before smoothing the handkerchief hem of her vintage dress. ‘The man is – was – the most calculating of cheaters.’

Edmonds managed to look bored. Amazing, given the subject and the fact that her philandering husband had rather recently also become her dead one. ‘You know that book of hers? That fount of smut?’

‘Breaking and Entering? I read Mr Potter’s review of it on PotShots.’

Audra laughed. ‘Review, my ass. The man was just covering his.’

‘His ass, you mean?’ I was confused. Again.

‘Of course. You know all those things the couple does in her book? Those are the very same things Larry had been suggesting we do.’

‘You mean in bed.’

‘No, in the grocery store.’

And Pavlik thought I was sarcastic. ‘You think he learned these … techniques from her?’

‘Where else? Let me tell you, a husband suddenly comes home with new ideas to spice up the spousal love life, you better believe he’s probably learned it through recent extramarital experience. Larry, in particular, wasn’t the type to read and follow self-help books. More the help-yourself category.’

I wasn’t sure I could argue with Audra’s logic, and I had to give her credit for a nice turn-of-phrase. ‘But weren’t you and Mr Potter working on a book of your own?’

She snorted. ‘Larry’s idea. Both Rosemary and he must have had so much fun, they couldn’t wait to write about it afterward. He was just ticked that she dumped him and then got to it first.’

‘Hence the horrible review?’

‘What do you think?’

I wasn’t sure what I thought. ‘Yet you and he were still intending to go ahead with your own … romantic novel?’

‘The only reason he wanted my name on the book was for the hook. It would be sort of a he-said, she-said. Or did, in this case.’

I suppressed a smile. ‘And did you?’

‘Do those things?’ Audra exploded. ‘Of course not. Which is how I know the old dog learned those new tricks from a different bitch. And probably by going to that horrible club, as well.’

‘Titanium?’

She blinked. ‘Yes. But how did you know?’

‘The matches your husband was using.’

‘So you saw them, too?’

I didn’t tell her I’d also found the empty matchbook on the floor near the door where he might have made his final exit. ‘I did. What kind of club is it?’

‘Leather. S&M. Swingers. All of the above, and mostly mixed together.’

‘You’ve been—?’ I started to ask, but the look on her face was a conversation-stopper. ‘On another subject, I know Mr Potter seemed to be having some sort of dispute with that young man, Danny. Has he been bothering you, as well?’

‘You mean earlier tonight? Or I guess it would be last night, now.’

I nodded.

‘Honestly? Yes. He wanted to know when Larry came up with the concept for the book.’

I didn’t want to mention Carson, so I said, ‘I heard Danny ask Mr Potter about the manuscript he sent him. Does he think your husband somehow stole his idea?’

‘Of course. As if “boy meets girl, boy does girl and then both do everybody else in sight” is a ground-breaking development in human sexuality.’

‘So you saw his manuscript?’

‘Whose?’

‘Danny’s.’

‘No, of course not. How would I do that?’

‘I thought your husband might have showed it to you.’

‘Larry and I share very little these days, including a bed. And by my choice, before you ask.’

Interesting. Yet the woman had taken the trouble to ‘surprise’ her guest-of-honor husband and seemed to have a considerable number of jealous bones in her body. A case of ‘if I can’t have him, nobody will’?